Thick as Thieves – Corruption in the Xbox Community

There are times when I don’t recognise the UK and some of the people living in it. This is another one of those times. The FAKE NEWS generated by entities sometimes has no meaning to most, but you can bet your life, someone somewhere has a reason for it and it will be used by others to justify their actions.

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On the 13th November I purchased a crystal console known as an X3CP, an old, fairly rare, Team Xecuter console that a brand new forum member that joined literally to sell it, named ‘TYRON BELFIELD’ suddenly dropped into several of the forums.
within 20 minutes of showing my interest, I asked if it was possible to buy it safely and the owner dropped it on eBaY and sent me the link so I purchased it. It was listed for £312.70 so the customer was well aware of what he had and set his own price. I had offered £300 due to its poor condition, with bank buttons missing and a rusty XLCD screen, with the next highest interested party offering £150 in our forum. I was told to offer £300 and it would be accepted.
At the time, I noticed there was no internal pictures, so I asked if the X3 chip inside was present and was told it was.

When the console arrived, I found that there was no X3 chip present, low and behold this was probably the reason that no pictures of it, were ever taken for it’s sale.
I spoke to the seller, that I had previously spoken to, on Facebook Messenger, sending pictures of the internals covered in dust untouched after removing the HDD and DVD drive. The seller (son of the man that built the console) swore blind he thought it was there, but when asked if he had opened it to check before selling it, his answer was NO.

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The motherboard had never been soldered to, so either the board had been swapped or a solderless device was used and had been removed. It doesn’t matter ‘how they remember the console being’ before its long spell in storage, it clearly wasn’t present when it arrived and they hadn’t taken the time, to take a single picture of the internals, so I think its safe to assume there is a reason for that.

I attempted to negotiate a 50/50 split with the seller to purchase another X3 chip via Messenger because I did not want to send it back, they aren’t found easily. I took no action on eBaY such as using the ‘not as described’ button for a refund. The problem wasn’t, that I didn’t think the package was of the value I paid. The problem was that it wasn’t complete as described by the seller.

The seller agreed in principal that once the money arrived in his bank account, this was an acceptable compromise and that the money was due the very next day. He also said he would speak to his father to ascertain whether there should be an X3 chip still in the console.
The very next day, I awoke to a tirade of abuse on eBay chat, calling me a scammer and other such language unbecoming of any eBaY seller I have ever dealt with in my life. It was a complete switch from the friendly cooperative person I had spoken to on Messenger the night before. Clearly his father had accessed the eBaY account to add to the correspondence.

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I have bought several of these consoles before now and never once had a problem. I’ve had one for $550 from the United States that was roached out beyond belief – NO PROBLEM. I bought one from Doncaster UK that was taken down by eBaY UK twice for £500 about 6 months ago – NO PROBLEM. I have no reason to lie and certainly no reason to complain regarding a £300 one, unless I have a legitimate reason to, same as all the others.

This seller has now clearly been contacted by Shane McMahon, who ‘used’ to be a moderator in the same UK Xbox forum I became a moderator in. I have had a bucket-load of people come to me, seeking advice, regarding outstanding monies paid to Shane in my time. Items they had waited months for and received nothing in return. Many times, he had promised them swaps for parts he had, others had paid for items that were never sent or at least to their knowledge. They had no tracking numbers to prove they had gone missing, no proof they were ever sent. I reported several of these to admin, after posts and comments were deleted by Shane.

Shane McMahon, under the guise of wanting pictures for a fake Xbox hard drive build he wanted to make (but never surfaced) had asked for a copy of my rebuild of Tim Pecks original Marvel build.
He was a person I had bought stuff from and always received them, a moderator in the same forum before I was. I didn’t necessarily trust him with a copy of my Xbox build though, as we both built and sold Xbox, which became justified after I sent him a copy the day before I went on holiday.

Little did I know, but about 5 days later, Tim Peck – who I had also sent a copy of the build too, also posted him one. Again, under the same guise of using pictures from that build for his own.

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Just to note – me and Tim discussed who sent the build first, later on and we established I did. We also agreed we never ever sent it for Shane to blatantly clone and sell, however this is exactly what he did. He sold my work which incorporated Tim’s original build that I spent months going through and debugging, replacing broken games, updating all apps and XBMC4Gamers on. I did all this as a thank-you to Tim for letting me use it in my Xbox builds. It was as much his creation and work as it had become mine.

Anyone who has ever worked on a hard drive, knows the time involved in that, first time, when you are clueless. Shane had no thought for me or my time sunk into this rebuild. He just took it and sold it.

As we were both moderators in the same forum, now at war, he put Ashley (Admin) in an impossible decision. Him or Me to remain as moderator. I stayed and Shane left due to his underhand actions.

It doesn’t matter whether Shane did this for profit or not. The fact is HE DID IT which he also did to a US Xbox community member that fully built his own Xbox build (Josh L did much more work than what I’d done on Tim’s). Nobody can trust a moderator of a forum when they behave like that. I’d already seen Shane delete posts and comments about him, he didn’t want seen on the forum. Shane should have EXPECTED IT, any reasonable person with sense would have known to.

Shane set up his own forum and has let the user that sold me the X3CP on eBaY make a post calling me a scammer and when approached by myself for it’s removal, used it as ammunition to once again justify the piss poor decisions he took himself.
‘I paid £300 got not even one penny back with parts missing and I’m the scammer’?? – FAKE NEWS ALERT. ONLY ONE POSSIBLE SCAMMER THERE.

Shane, it does not matter who was dying in your life. Your actions at the time were that of thievery and deceit. You should have been focused on your family if you had issues, yet you found time to do that to me, so I have zero pity for your behaviour.
These are the recent people that have died in my life. It is not a complete list, as family members somewhat estranged to me, have also died, whose funerals I attended.

Dec 27th 2021 – Cancer – Brother-in-law
Nov 2022 – Faulty Heart Valve – My Sister
Oct 2024 – Prostate Cancer – Life long Friend

Did you consider my feelings for any of these deaths Shane McMahon? You sold my hard drive build after my own sister died.
The number of people I screwed over during all these deaths is ZERO.

I made a name for myself with hard work, I made XDevPro to show off this work and XDevPro.net to be able to purchase some of it. Where people have a safe environment to buy things they may not know where to locate. A place you could trust, by a small team that has previously and will continue to help in the community. My personal reputation is built on delivering the goods and supporting every person that puts their trust in me, that may have an issue down the line (it happens occasionally).
There are many great honest community members out there, but where things flourish and grow, weeds also appear, trying to dominate their own patch of land.

For public information, the person that sold me the X3CP with missing X3 chip and called me a scammer, even though I’ve had zero money back from him is eBaY’s user – kerrygold248 ie. TYRON BELFELD. His tirade also involved his father LEO BELFIELD. I am considering notifying the police for the threats by Leo Belfield.

Shane McMahon is the self-declared admin of a Facebook forum with barely any members (just 140 total in over a year) he has put a long post about me on there, trying to stoke old fires and begging for pity using his mental health and his uncle’s cancer like sad weapons and I couldn’t give a toss because he is full of shit. Most people on there probably already know it.

I heavily suggest you avoid any forums named as ‘retro revival’ like the plague, the admin is this thieving cretin hence the title ‘Thick As Thieves’. If you are going to allow members to post fake unfounded allegations on your Facebook forum, it truly shows your character.
The original eBaY post is shown here. Note the lack of internal pictures.

Let the birds sing and the flowers bloom – but can we get some weed killer over ‘ere 😊